Back to Harry!
After months under the hood, then the last few weeks on the brakes, I finally started draining the diffs and and transmission & xfer case. The rear diff drained about cup of clear water before the green goop. I popped the cover off and started scooping sludge with a putty knife, then sprayed in some brake cleaner and let that drain and evaporate. Good news is there isn't any rust to speak of. I put the cover on with a a few bolts, no gasket, and pumped in a quart of cheap oil to hopefully loosen more sludge. I'll drain that tomorrow and try and wipe out whatever goop I can before closing it up with a fresh gasket and filling with fresh GL4. I'll drive it a couple of hundred miles and change it out again.
The front diff didn't have any water, but the oil was thick, dark and tarry. I gave it the same treatment as the rear and will change it again after a couple of hundred miles.
Drained the tranny and just dark oil, no water. But a big glob of goop was peeking out the drain hole and nearly blocking it by the time the oil stopped flowing. I scooped a sample and dissolved it with some kerosene, then dipped my magnet in the liquid and sure enough, lots of fine metallic dust in the goop. I don't imagine this is unusual, but I decided to pull the top off to inspect the guts.
Well, I learned one thing--no one had accessed the top of the tranny since May 18, 1980. Unless you count the mice who built a nest in the middle of the crusty mud from the Mt. St. Helens mud flow that Harry was caught in.
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This made me a little nervous about what I might find under the cover.
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But to my untrained eye, it looks pretty good. No rust at least. How do the gears look to you guys?
There was some gunk on the side walls where there is a shelf above the drain hole, and of course a lot of gunk on the bottom. I put the drain plug in, sprayed some kerosene on the walls and poured in about a pint, let it sit for a couple of hours then drained it and flushed it with clean 30 wt. The majority of the gunk seems to have come out. The xfer case is draining now. My plan is to refill with GL4 and get it on the road. Should I change again soon like with the diffs?